Eighteenth-century drama is often dismissed as homogenous, aesthetically uninteresting, or politically complacent. This book reveals the incredibly intriguing and intricate nature of the periods history plays and their often messy dramatisaton of the complexities of patriotic rhetoric and national identification.

This collection brings together a group of distinguished and original theater historians engaged in rethinking the nature of early modern theater history as a discipline. Whether focusing on the relation between scripts and performance practice, the structure of theatrical companies, the social dimensions of drama, or the archaeology of the stage, all are concerned with basic questions of evidence and interpretation, and offer significant, and often startling, revisions of our view of the early modern theater.

During the French Revolution, traditional literary forms such as the sentimental novel and the moral tale dominate literary production. At first glance, it might seem that these texts are unaffected by the upheavals in France; in fact they reveal not only a surprising engagement with politics but also an internalised emotional response to the turbulence of the period. In this innovative and wide-ranging study, Katherine Astbury uses trauma theory as a way of exploring the apparent contradiction between the proliferation of non-political literary texts and the events of the Revolution. Through the narratives of established bestselling literary figures of the Ancien Regime (primarily Marmontel, Madame de Genlis and Florian), and the early works of first generation Romantics Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, she traces how the Revolution shapes their writing, providing an intriguing new angle on cultural production of the 1790s.Katherine Astbury is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Warwick.

First published in 1976, this was the first comprehensive annotated bibliography of Mary Wollstonecraft's works and most of the critical and biographical comments on her in English written between 1788 and 1975. It is designed both as a research tool for scholars and students and as a revelation of the quantity and variety of comment. The book is divided into three main chronological time periods of publication date and suggests the vagaries of Wollstonecraft's posthumous reputation and indicates the peaks and troughs of interest. Known as an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, Mary Wollstonecraft has received much critical attention with particular interest in her unorthodox lifestyle of the time and is now regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers.

"Literature and Culture Handbooks" are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including: - Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts - Guides to key critics, concepts and topics - An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research - Case studies in reading literary and critical texts - Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms. "The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook" is an invaluable introduction to literature and culture in the eighteenth century. >

Thomas Holcroft was a central figure of the 1790s, whose texts played an important role in the transition toward Romanticism. In this, the first essay collection devoted to his life and work, the contributors reassess Holcroft's contributions to a remarkable range of literary genres-drama, poetry, fiction, autobiography, political philosophy-and to the project of revolutionary reform in the late eighteenth century. The self-educated son of a cobbler, Holcroft transformed himself into a popular playwright, influential reformist novelist, and controversial political radical. But his work is not important merely because he himself was a remarkable character, but rather because he was a hinge figure between laboring Britons and the dissenting intelligentsia, between Enlightenment traditions and developing 'Romantic' concerns, and between the world of self-made hack writers and that of established critics. Enhanced by an updated and corrected chronology of Holcroft's life and work, key images, and a full bibliography of published scholarship, this volume makes way for more concerted and focused scholarship and teaching on Holcroft. Taken together, the essays in this collection situate Holcroft's self-fashioning as a member of London's literati, his central role among the London radical reformers and intelligentsia, and his theatrical innovations within ongoing explorations of the late eighteenth-century public sphere of letters and debate.

How did Casanova learn the theory of sex? Why did male pornographers write as intellectual women? What forms of sexuality emerged in the age of educational, scientific, and political revolution? Schooling Sex reconstructs the vividly compelling loose canon of sexually-explicit literature, in Latin, Italian, French, and English.

Discusses the transition from a largely oral to a fundamentally literate society in the early modern period. During this period the spoken word remained of the utmost importance but development of printing and the spread of popular literacy combined to transform the nature of communication. Examines English, Scottish and Welsh Oral culture to provide the first pan-British study of the subject. Covers several aspects of oral culture ranging from tradition, to memories of the civil war, to changing mechanics for the settling of debts. The time-span concentrates on the period 1500-1800 but includes material from outside this time frame, covering a longer chronolgical span than most other studies to show the link between early modern and modern oral and literate cultures. -- .

What are Shakespeare's uses of the conceptual space of conflict? And what has been the role played by principles, patterns and situations of conflict in the construction of the Shakespeare myth, and in its European and then global spread? This collection looks, from a truly pan-European vantage point, at the variety of conflictive and conflicting dimensions embedded in Shakespeare's texts (Part I); at the way Shakespeare's universe of discourse has been enlisted to address and dramatize conflicts of a socio-political, cultural or aesthetic nature (Part II); and at how Shakespearean meanings have been renegotiated through reception and reproduction in actual historical contexts of strife or outright belligerence (Part III). The fascinatingly complex picture that emerges from the original studies gathered here provides new insight into Shakespeare's unique position in world literature and culture.

Examines the importance of intertextuality, in particular hypertextuality, in the poetics of Castilian romances of chivalry. Runner-up for the 2015 Publication Prize awarded by the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland and the Spanish Embassy Castilian romances of chivalry were the dominant form of fiction in Europe during the peak of the Spanish Empire in the the sixteenth century. Whilst the material traits of chivalric romances have been thoroughly studied, Don Quijote's shadow has often resulted in the neglect of the literary aspects and influence of the genre, thus hindering our understanding of Golden Age and Spanish fiction. Conversely, this book examines the literary transformation of the genre throughout the sixteenth century from the perspective of intertextuality. In particular, this book focuses on the literary practices central to the craft and development of the genre: the rewriting of previous romance, the writing of sequels, and the formation of narrative cycles. These three processes defined the poetics of the genre and set the bases and literary techniques for other fictional genres and works, including Don Quijote itself. Daniel Gutierrez Trapaga is Associate Professor in Research Methodologies (Hispanic Literature) at the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

Examining the work of three authors: Richardson, Haywood and Burney, and their representation of domestic space, this book argues that to make such spaces accessible to modern readers they need to have information of the real domestic. By recreating specifics of these spaces this book innervates the fictional domestic interior for modern readers.

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Railing, Reviling, and Invective in English Literary Culture, 1588-1617 is the first book to consider railing plays and pamphlets as participating in a coherent literary movement that dominated much of the English literary landscape during the late Elizabethan/early Jacobean period. Author Prendergast considers how these crisis-ridden texts on religious, gender, and aesthetic controversies were encouraged and supported by the emergence of the professional theater and print pamphlets. She argues that railing texts by Shakespeare, Nashe, Jonson, Jane Anger and others became sites for articulating anxious emotions-including fears about the stability of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth and the increasing factional splits between Protestant groups. But, given that railings about religious and political matters often led to censorship or even death, most railing writers chose to circumvent such possible repercussions by railing against unconventional gender identity, perverse sexual proclivities, and controversial aesthetics. In the process, Prendergast argues, railers shaped an anti-aesthetics that was itself dependent on the very expressions of perverse gender and sexuality that they discursively condemned, an aesthetics that created a conceptual third space in which bitter enemies-male or female, conformist or nonconformist-could bond by engaging in collaborative experiments with dialogical invective. By considering a literary mode of articulation that vehemently counters dominant literary discourse, this book changes the way that we look at late Elizabethan and early Jacobean literature, as it associates works that have been studied in isolation from each other with a larger, coherent literary movement.

Arising from a research project on depression in the eighteenth century, this book discusses the experience of depressive states both in terms of existing modes of thought and expression, and of attempts to describe and live with suffering. It also asks what present-day society can learn about depression from the eighteenth-century experience.

Contains: Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis The History of the Book: 1 Contributors to the Quarterly Review: A History, 1809-25 The History of the Book: 2 Wilkie Collins's American Tour, 1873-4 The History of the Book: 3 William Blake and the Art of Engraving The History of the Book: 4 Charles Lamb, Elia and the London Magazine: Metropolitan Muse The History of the Book: 5 Reading in History: New Methodologies from the Anglo-American Tradition The History of the Book: 6 Middle-Class Writing in Late Medieval London The History of the Book: 7 Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality The History of the Book: 8 Romantic Marginality: Nation and Empire on the Borders of the Page The History of the Book: 9 Wordsworth's Poetic Collections, Supplementary Writing and Parodic Reception The History of the Book: 10

This studyargues that female networks of conversation, correspondenceand patronage formed the foundation for women's work in the 'higher' realms of Shakespeare criticism and poetry. Eger traces the transition between Enlightenment and Romantic culture, arguing for the relevance of rational argument in the history of women's writing.

Shakespeare had extraordinary intelligence, unheard-of powers of observation and interpretation, a soaring imagination, a way with words that defies description, and a defining interest in the theater. He brought kings, queens, heroes, and peasantry to the stage so they could be seen in a more realistic fashion. Even so, in modern times, assistance is often needed to interpret Shakespeare's work.

In "A Leg Up on the Canon," author Jim McGahern provides an extensive biography of Shakespeare and offers an introductory guide to his histories, comedies, tragedies, romances, and poems. McGahern presents summaries of the texts, explanations of difficult passages, extensive historical context, and glossaries of terms no longer in use. In each volume, he outlines the plot of plays in that category and then delivers a one-act play with inclusive commentary. McGahern includes pertinent remarks and important speeches and soliloquies interlaced with brief explanations and descriptions of the actions on stage as well as plot developments.

"A Leg Up on the Canon," a four-volume series, provides insights into the word music of the talented man from Stratford.

First published in English 1961, this reissue relates the problems of form and style to the development of dramatic speech in pre-Shakespearean tragedy. The work offers positive standards by which to assess the development of pre-Shakespearean drama and, by tracing certain characteristics in Elizabethan tragedy which were to have a bearing on Shakespeare's dramatic technique, helps to illuminate the foundations on which Shakespeare built his dramatic oeuvre.

Arguably the first play in a Shakespearean tetralogy, Richard II is a unique and compelling political drama whose themes still resonate today. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse and its format presents unique theatrical challenges. Politically engaged and controversial, it raises crucial debates about the relationship between early modern art, audience response and state power. This collection provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the critical and theatrical history of the play. The substantial introduction surveys the history of critical interpretations of Richard II since the eighteenth century. The eleven newly written critical essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field then adopt an eclectic range of critical approaches that encourage scholars and students to pursue new and imaginative directions with the text.

This volume of Robert Burns's Commonplace Books, Tours Journals and Miscellaneous Prose Works is a major contribution to our understanding of the life and writings of one of the major Scottish, and British, poets of all times. To the extent that the Commonplace Books and other prose writings offer a glimpse into Burns's creative workshop, they record the self-conscious poetic development of a man who was endowed with none of the advantages of birth and education enjoyed by many other writers. Spanning nearly two decades of his sadly foreshortened life, they permit a new understanding of his unique relationship to the literary and social culture of late eighteenth-century Scotland, and help explain how and why this humbly-born Ayrshire farmer became a poet of world renown. The items included here have never before been published complete in one volume (some are published for the first time), and they are arranged chronologically in order to highlight the major creative stages of his life. In contrast to the poems and songs, most of the material included was unpublished during the poet's lifetime, so this new edition is largely based on fresh transcriptions of manuscripts in Burns's hand, or in the hands of his various amanuenses. It offers diplomatic transcriptions that adhere as closely as possible to RB's original manuscript page, retaining his eccentric spellings, capitalisation, long and short dashes, punctuation, and use of ampersands, as well as marking revisions and elisions. The edition features a general introduction, and each item is preceded by full headnote, assessing its importance in relation to Burns's life and poetic corpus. Notes explicate names, cultural, historical and literary references, providing full cross-references these with the poetry and correspondence.

Mr. Loftis provides the first comprehensive account of the relationship of restoration drama to the Spanish drama of the golden Age.

This book explores the development of the global phenomenon of Prison Shakespeare, from its emergence in the 1980s to the present day. It provides a succinct history of the phenomenon and its spread before going on to explore one case study the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble's (Australia) Shakespeare Prison Project in detail. The book then analyses the phenomenon from a number of perspectives, and evaluates a number of claims made about the outcomes of such programs, particularly as they relate to offender health and behaviour. Unlike previous works on the topic, which are largely individual case studies, this book focuses not only on Prison Shakespeare's impact on the prisoners who directly participate, but also on prison culture and on broader social attitudes towards both prisoners and Shakespeare.

"This ground-breaking collection of essays presents a new bookish literary history, which situates questions about books at the intersection of a range of debates about the role of authors and readers, the organization of knowledge, the vogue for collecting, and the impact of overlapping technologies of writing and shifting generic boundaries"--Provided by publisher.

German women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries have been the subject of feminist, literary, critical and historical studies for around 30 years. This volume takes stock of what feminist literary criticism has achieved in that time and reflects on future trends in the field.

"Literature and Culture Handbooks" are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including:

- Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts

- Guides to key critics, concepts and topics

- An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research

- Case studies in reading literary and critical texts

- Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms.

"The Shakespeare Handbook" is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare and early modern literature.